Bruce Springsteen and an American coda

Ronald Radosh has a good article in The American Interest on Bruce Springsteen's Seeger Sessions. The Boss, who has already experimented with a different sort of sound in The Ghost of Tom Joad, now goes retro once again, back to the age of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Radosh likes the result. He quotes LA Times staff writer Ann Powers: "It was a history lesson you could dance to."

Radosh doesn't approve so much of the liberal politics of these songs. "Springsteen is entitled to his views, and he has made them clear," he writes. "But do his audiences really believe that the United States should pull its troops out of Iraq immediately? Do they believe, as Seeger used to, that the singing of left-wing and antiwar songs has the power to change American foreign policy?" Let us hope so, for the political message of many of these songs adds an extra source of vibrancy.